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Edgell Rickword
John Edgell Rickword, MC (22 October 1898 – 15 March 1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s. Life Youth Rickwood was born in Colchester, Essex. He served as an officer in the British Army]] in World War I, having joined the Artists' Rifles in 1916, and was awarded a Military Cross.[http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=1920 A Conversation with Edgell Rickword] On 4 January 1919, Rickword developed an illness that was diagnosed as a "general vascular invasion which had resulted in general septicaemia". His left eye was so badly infected that they thought it necessary to remove it to prevent the infection from spreading to the other eye. He was a published war poet, and collected his early verse in Behind the Eyes (1921).http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Rickword.html Artists Rifles, an audiobook published in 2004, includes two poems read by Rickword: Winter Warfare and The Soldier Addresses His Body. Both were recorded during the 1970s. Other war poets heard on the CD include Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, David Jones and Lawrence Binyon. Rickword can also be heard on Memorial Tablet, an audiobook of readings by Sassoon issued in 2003.http://www.ltmrecordings.com/artistsriflesaudioCD.html He went up to the University of Oxford in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers: Anthony Bertram, Edmund Blunden, Vivian de Sola Pinto, A. E. Coppard, Louis Golding, Robert Graves, L. P. Hartley, and Alan Porter.Hobday, p. 44. His work appeared in the Oxford Poetry 1921 anthology, with Blunden, Golding, Porter, Graves, Richard Hughes, and Frank Prewett.http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/oxpoetry/index/ir.html Critic Rickwood then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, which led to his celebrated review of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. J.C. Squire published him in the London Mercury, and Desmond MacCarthy as literary editor of the New Statesman gave him work. Rickword started the Calendar of Modern Letters literary review in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by Douglas Garman and then Bertram Higgins, and contributions from his cousin C.H. Rickword. The Scrutinies books of collected pieces from it were a succes d'estime; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature (G.K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells).David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode (1976), p. 419. The Calendar's influence as a precursor of later criticism was very marked in the early days of Scrutiny, the magazine founded a few years later by F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis.Bernard Bergonzi, The Calendar of Modern Letters, The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 16, Literary Periodicals Special Number (1986), pp. 150-163. Rickword also wrote for that publication. Communist Rickword joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934,Hobday, p. 153. and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the Spanish Civil War]], while continuing to write poetry. He was friendly with Randall Swingler, the 'official' poetry voice of the CPGB, and with Jack Lindsay, his only real rival as a theoretician. He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Ralph Fox, Julius Lipton, A.L. Morton, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Alick West. When Lawrence & Wishart was created as the official CPGB publishing house, in 1936, Rickword became a director.Hobday, p. 168. It was through Rickword that Lawrence & Wishart published Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology, though at her own expense.Anne Chisholm, Nancy Cunard: A biography (1979), p. 277. At that same period he was a co-founder of the ''Left Review, which he edited. His associates included James Boswell, who was the art editor; they had met around 1929.http://www.jboswell.info/hogarth.htmlAndy Croft (editor). A Weapon in the Struggle (1998), p. 29. Left Review existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK.Laura Marcus, Peter Nicholls, The Cambridge History of Twentieth-century English Literature (2004), p. 387.M. Keith Booker, Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: Censorship, Revolution, and Writing (2005), p. 419. Later he became Editor of Our Time, the Communist review, from 1944 to 1947, working with Arnold Rattenburyhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1906567.ece and David Holbrook. Rickword had an upbeat view at the time on the possibilities of popular culture and radical politics, and the circulation rose as he broadened the publication's scope from popular political poetry.Simon Featherstone, War Poetry: An Introductory Reader (1995), p. 46. The post-war clique around Our Time, the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included Christopher Hill, Charles Hobday, Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, Montagu Slater, Swingler, E. P. Thompson; and Doris Lessing joined it.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/charles-hobday-528464.html Publications Poetry *''Behind the Eyes''. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1921. *''Invocation to Angels, and The Happy New Year''. London: Wishart, 1928. *''Twittingpan, and some others''. London: Wishart, 1931. *''Collected Poems''. London: Bodley Head, 1947. *''Fifty Poems'' (introduction by Roy Fuller). London: Enitharmon, 1970. *''Poet's Fare''. Stoke Ferry, UK: Daedalus Press, 1975. *''Behind the Eyes: Selected poems and translations''. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1976. *''Collected Poems'' (edited by Charles Hobday). Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1991. Fiction *''Love One Another: Seven tales''. London: Mandrake Press, 1929. Non-fiction *''Rimbaud: The boy and the poet''. London: Heinemann, 1924; New York: Knopf, 1924. *''Essays and Opinions, 1921-31'' (edited by Alan Young). Cheadle, UK: Carcanet, 1974.'' *''Literature in Society: Essays and Opinions, Volume 2, 1931-1978''. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1978. Translated *Marcel Coulon, Poet Under Saturn: The tragedy of Verlaine. London: H. Toulmin, 1932. Edited *''The Calendar of Modern Letters'' literary magazine, 1925-1927 **collected as The Calendar of Modern Letters: March 1925 - July 1927 (introduction by Malcolm Bradbury). 3 volumes, London: Cass, 1966; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966. *''Scrutinies: By various writers''. London: Wishart, 1928. *''Scrutinies, Volume II: By various writers''. London: Wishart, 1931. *''A handbook of freedom: A record of English democracy through twelve centuries'' (edited with Jack Lindsay). London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1939; New York: International Publishers, 1939. **also published as Spokesmen for Liberty: A record of English democracy through twelve centuries. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1941. *''War and Culture: The decline of culture under capitalism'' (pamphlet}. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. *''Soviet Writers Reply to English Writers' Questions''. London: Writers Group, Society for Cultural Relations with the U.S.S.R., 1948. *''Radical Squibs and Loyal Ripostes: A collection of satirical pamphlets of the Regency period, 1819-1821''. Bath, UK: Adams & Dart, 1971. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Edgell Rickword, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 24, 2014. See also *List of British poets References *''Edgell Rickword: A Poet at War'' (1989) by Charles Hobday, Carcanet Press *''Edgell Rickword: No Illusions'' (2007) by Michael Copp, Cecil Woolf Notes External links ;Poems *"Intimate Things" *"Winter Warfare" *"Trench Poets" *"Fatigue" ;Audio / video *Edgell Rickword at The Poetry Archive ;About *Edgell Rickword at Carcanet Press *Edgell Rickword at War Poetry *Edgell Rickword at Spartacus International *A Conversation with Edgell Rickword, Poetry Nation *"Twenty-one Aspects of Edgell Ridgewood" by Jack Lindsay Category:1898 births Category:1982 deaths Category:British Army personnel of World War I Category:British World War I poets Category:English communists Category:English essayists Category:English journalists Category:English literary critics Category:English poets Category:English writers Category:Marxist journalists Category:Marxist writers Category:People from Colchester Category:Royal Berkshire Regiment officers Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers Category:Recipients of the Military Cross Category:Marxist poets Category:Communist writers Category:Communist poets Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:War poets